


Opposites Attract

by karrenia_rune



Category: Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling
Genre: Early in Canon, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-11 08:33:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2061240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at the early days in the friendship between Baloo and Bagheera and Baloo's attempts to teach his panther friend how to catch fish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Opposites Attract

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spoke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/gifts).



Disclaimer: The Jungle Book and the characters who appear are the creations of Rudyard Kipling and are only 'borrowed' for  
the purposes of the story. They are not mine.

Note: Written for spoke's request in the 2014 Fic Corner Exchange

"Opposites Attract" 

 

Evening in jungle was a mixture of stillness and noise, and a twilight hush that had its own rhythms and its measured heartbeats. Bagheera found that odd dissonance soothing, but he would never go so far as to admit to anyone, that he much preferred evening to the day-lit hours. 

He was a quiet, solitary hunter, by nature accustomed to solitude rather than of a gregarious bent, need to seek out the company of others. 

And it worked for him. 

What Bagheera had never expected was that another would seek him out, not out of his own curiosity, because apparently contrary to popular wisdom would have it, curiosity apparently was not only the province of the feline tribes; for a certain brown bear of his acquaintances also possessed this need to be, to move, to search and more or less find trouble in the most unlikely places.

, In the beginning, the sheer amount of ruckus that accompanied the bear everywhere he went, nearly drove him crazy, and nearly but not quite undermined their friendship. It was if Baloo simply could not stifle his natural ebullience and enthusiasm for life when he had too; it was just that he was just filled to the brim with energy and good humor that it made it nearly impossible for him to contain.

In time, Bagheera learned that that was the thing that most drew him to Baloo, and perhaps his studied calm like was a draw for Baloo as well.

If any others among the jungle tribes thought that such a friendship between two of perhaps the most unlikely pairs was at all strange or bond to failure they may have said something early on, but for the life of him  
Bagheera could neither recall or care too much about it. He had always been prone to considering his options, and then making an informed decision and acting upon it. 

And if Baloo often seemed to have poor timing, such as when he cheerfully blundered around a patch of tall grass out of which Bagheera had been stalking his evening dinner at t the crucial pounce and tackle moment, and consequently startled the gazelle away, then so be it. Bagheera would snarl and growl and mock-severely cuff the bear, who would take the scolding in the spirit that it which it was intended.

There was even a time when Baloo was all for teaching his friend the fine art catching the elusive and wriggly silver and black-banded fish that teemed in that particular river and were a delicacy among the brown bear tribes. 

It involved standing up in the shallow end of a river on his forelegs, intently and patiently trying to catch the elusive and wriggly fish with one’s paws.  
Bagheera, like most big cats, disdained and moving water, except as a source from which to drink and gave an almost involuntary shudder all up and down his soot-black length at the very idea of partially submerging himself in moving water, but Baloo was insistent.

So here they were. “Come on, Bagheera, it’s not all that bad as you make out,” said Baloo.

“No it is worse than I imagined,” replied Bagheera.

“I can tell you from experience, that it really isn’t that bad. My grey-furred grandma once told me about, well, to be honest, she was talking about getting thorns out of our paws when were cubs, but general idea still applies,” Baloo paused and cocked his head to one side as if thinking the matter over before he concluded,”The reality is generally better than you imagine it will be, whenever it comes to something new or unpleasant, so it’s best not to worry about it so much. You just grit your teeth and make the best of it.”

“Sage advice, replied the black panther. “Are you certain you remembered it correctly?” “Of course I did,” Baloo retorted genially. “I may be a bit soft in the head, like and I probably was a trail to my dear old mum, but bless her heart, certainly drove stuff into this thick head of mine so that it would stick.”

Bagheera was doing just that, gritting his teeth watching the ebb and flow of the water beneath his belly and paws intently and then in the instant when a silver and black flash floated near enough, he shot out with his forepaws and tried to hold the fish tightly lest it escapes. “What do I do now?” he asked.

“Toss it to me and I’ll add to the pile on the shore.”

In the midst of doing as his friend suggested Bagheera over-estimated both the distance and effort and toppled over face-first into the river, howling in frustration and shock at the impact of water covering from nose to tail. The world under the surface of the water was cool but darker than he expected it would be, and almost soothing after the heat of the day. However, he had little leisure to appreciate it, because all he could see of the surface was a burning reflection of the sun hitting the water, like a kind of reversed fire glow, and the effort to get air into his lungs where the was none, absorbed all of his intention.  
Baloo, for his part, had the good grace not to laugh at the elegant and urbane black panther struggling in the water

It was only when it became apparent that the panther was not bobbing up to the surface and was on the verge of being pulled further and further out of the shallows and into deeper water where he would eventually be sucked all the way to the waterfall at the far end, did Baloo begin to worry.] and immediately dove into full length into the river to save his friend. Gripping Bagheera's tail with his teeth and treading water with his back legs, Baloo took a moment to get his head above water,  
locating the direction that he wanted to go, and pulled with all his might, and pulled, until he could feel the grit of the sandy shore beneath his paws once more. 

He let loose of Bagheera’s tail, somewhat the worse for wear for having been tugged and yanked by the brown bear’s teeth.

The panther he began to cough and sputter out gouts of river water that he’d swallowed. He was conscious, so that was a good thing. It was also a good thing that in the midst of the sputtering and coughing that he could not make out the muttered growls.

Baloo tried to get his friend dry as soon as he possibly could, using a leaf from a giant fern to do so, and when his friend was more or less back to his old self he sat beside him and waited until the other had fully recovered from his sudden bath.

“Well, are you feeling better,” asked Baloo after a while had passed.

“I, “ Bagheera said severely, “am never doing that again.”

“What going swimming or catching fish?”

“Catching fish.”

“Does that mean you don’t want any of our dinner?” asked Baloo.

Bagheera got up from his near sprawl on the sandy shore and rose to assume a more dignified position, his whiskers bristling, “I have not forgotten all sense of decorum that I have shall be remiss in thanking you for saving my life. I shall not forget it.”

“You’re welcome, my friend,” Baloo replied, suddenly feeling a bit flush, and also extremely hungry after the hours spent fishing and the unaccustomed exertion. “So, shall we eat?”

“Yes, I believe that we shall. How does one go about eating these, ah, fish?”

“It’s easy,” Baloo replied,” I’ll show you.”

Bagheera sighed, “Famous last words.” But as you mentioned earlier, Baloo, it’s never as bad as you imagine it will be.”


End file.
